One of the minor reasons. (even more minor have been cuts in discretionary spending -- the vaunted "fiscal discipline").
Second, there is regrettably little "fighting over the surplus." Both parties have redefined it as net of Social Security surplus, which leaves much less over which to fight. Most (80%) of the non-SS surplus rests on the stupid convention that discretionary spending thru 2002 falls relative to inflation. This also means, incidentally, that neither Bradley nor Gore can fund their initiatives (which roughly exhaust the non-SS surplus) without the VERY SAME size cuts that would have been required by the Repug's $792 billion tax cut.
> the GOP is trying to eliminate by reversing the tax increases on the
wealthy
> passed by the Dems. It is worth noting that by the time the GOP lost
They made a nice run at it in the 1997 bill, which if memory serves Clinton signed.
> control of the Senate in 1987, the top tax rate on the wealthy had dropped
> from 70% down to 28% (with some closing of loopholes due to the 1986 tax
> bill).
>
> In 1990, the Democratic controlled Congress forced Bush to accept an
> increase in that top tax rate to 33% (that number right, Max?). In 1993,
> the top rate, including a new surtax for Medicare on wealthy individuals
was
> pushed to 41%.
I don't remember the specifics of the '90 rate changes. Ask me tomorrow.
The Dems and the deficit maniacs both had a role in moving Bush to renounce his read my lips pledge.
Also, "top rate" can be a little ambiguous. The Medicare change is not a surtax, properly speaking, but a removal of the cap on taxable payroll for the Medicare component of the payroll tax. The rate is 'top' in the sense that it affects high salaries. It has no bearing on so-called "ordinary," non-payroll income, for which the top rate is 39.6, and even less for capital gains income, where the rates are now 20% and below.
>
> So the difference between GOP control and Democratic control was 28%
versus 41% top tax rates on the wealthy. This is not Adam Smith versus Karl
Marx, but it is not beanball either. >
Dems helped to pass the '86 bill w/the 28 percent rate. In light of concurrent base-broadening this is a less regressive change than it looks. The Repugs immediately started to renege on the bargain embodied in the '86 bill (lower rates, broader base) by resuming their eternal quest for the exemption of capital gains from taxation, which laid the basis for the Dems getting rate increases.
Like NN, I will usually vote Dem if there is nothing else in the offing. Right now the biggest problem is the exaltation of the SS surplus as sacred, something which will prevent a Dem majority in the House from doing anything other than preventing discretionary spending from sinking in real terms.
mbs